Long Time Coming
by Meg-atron3
Summary: Steve doesn't have a soul mark, but that's not unusual for a generation of guys staring down the barrel of World War Two. Less usual is waking up sixty-plus years later. With a mark that wasn't there before. Now with Chapter 2 and more soul marks!
1. Chapter 1

Like almost a third of the guys in his generation, Steve didn't have a soul mark. Neither did Bucky, and when the war broke out, they, like most guys, figured that was the reason. Couldn't meet your soul mate if you died in a muddy field in France. Of course, there were a few lucky ones who met their soul mates because of the war, their words etched in French or German or Dutch and spoken by a pretty girl during a horrible time.

Some guys didn't have a soul mark even though they would live through the war. It happened before, during the Great War. Guys came back with their soul's too broken from war to fully bond with anyone. They still fell in love, got married, had kids. They just never connected as deeply as those who had the first words of their soul mate printed on their bodies.

Steve had held out hope at first, the words didn't show until your soul mate was born, and he could be older than she was. But he gave up hope at about fifteen. There was an age gap, and then there was just being a creepy old man with a child bride.

When he met Peggy, he was surprised her first words weren't branded on him. There was such an instant connection, he had actually checked his body that night to make sure they hadn't miraculously shown up somewhere. When Bucky fell though... Well, he knew why neither of them had had marks. Bucky died never meeting his soul mate, and Steve felt a part of his own soul fall down that ravine with his best friend. Even if he was supposed to be with Peggy, he would never be a whole man again.

And when he pointed the plane's nose down to the cold, icy water below, he was glad there were no marks on him. He wasn't breaking a soul mate's heart by doing the one thing he had been created to do. Save the world.

* * *

Waking up after seventy years was a shock. It was somehow all so different, and yet exactly the same. He could handle the time warp he just went through, pretty much expected the science fiction type technology all around him, was not at all surprised that the tesseract was still an issue. The thing that threw him for a loop was the neat, girlish handwriting wrapping around his left ribs. That had definitely not been there before.

 _Did you just jump in front of a bullet for me? Wow, that's... Oh- Oh shit. I think you missed one. Oh god, that hurts!_

He made it through the Chitauri invasion without jumping in front of any bullets. Not that the alien horde was even shooting bullets, but it had seemed like a rather fitting time to meet someone who was getting shot at. No such luck though.

After the Incident, he took some time off. Drove around the country, visited all the places he and Bucky had talked about, all the hometown's of the American Commandos. He didn't meet her, but then he wasn't really expecting to. He needed time. Time to get comfortable in his own skin, time to figure out what had happened in the last 70 years, time to get used to the idea that somewhere out there was someone who had his sloppy handwriting imprinted on her skin.

He'd lie awake at night sometimes, unwilling to sleep more, and think about her words. She would get shot, even though he tried to protect her. Was the universe cruel enough to take her away from him just as they met? He'd have to prepare for that. Try to learn all he could to save her if it came to that. He'd lost too much as it was.

He returned to New York just as summer faded into fall. He knew what he would do. He would return to Shield, take the job they offered, save the world one mission at a time, but first, he had a genius to see.

* * *

"Stark? You down here?"

"Is that the dulcet tones of the Star Spangled Man with a Plan I hear?"

Steve just huffed and gave a wry smile. Some things would follow him forever it seemed. "Yeah, that's me."

"What can I do for you, Cap? Shield need a refresh? Suit need some upgrades? Seriously, I know Shield has some good guys in R&D, but I'm better. I could make your suit half the weight with twice the stopping power."

Steve grinned as he finally located the billionaire on the floor of the lab, wearing grease stained tank top and jeans, rolling out from under something large and robot-like. "We can talk about the suit if you want, but I'm actually here for something else. Something rather... personal."

"Why, Cap! I'm flattered! Alright then, now, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..." Tony had the grace to sheepishly grin at Steve's hard look. "Sorry. Tamping down the sass for the next couple minutes. Talk fast."

Steve swallowed hard, then lifted his shirt up to show Tony the words along his ribs. Tony read them quickly, a genuine smile gracing his face for once. "Must have acquired those while you were in the ice," he noted.

"Yeah, something of a shock. I want something... something small I can carry around. Something that will close a wound or stabilize her until help can get there or something. I can't lose anyone else, Tony." Steve's voice cracked along the last sentence, his vulnerability seeping through the words.

"I hear ya. Give me a day. No, two days! I'll text you when it's ready. Just don't meet her until then, kay?"

"No promises, Stark. This is one thing I definitely don't have a plan for."

* * *

It was another two years before he met her. Two years of carrying Tony's tiny titanium emergency kit around in his pocket, during which time he received three upgrades and eleven replacements. In those two years, he also started working with Shield, moved to DC, befriended the red-headed assassin who tried to match-make him with everyone she knew, and finally destroyed the very agency they worked for. He also found out that Bucky was still alive.

His life now had two missions. Wait for _her_ and find Bucky. With no leads on either, he moved back to New York, finally taking Stark up on the offer of rent-free accommodations in his massive tower. It was an easier adjustment that he had thought, since Nat and Sam moved in at the same time, Clint and Bruce were already there, and Tony's impending marriage to Pepper had calmed him down considerably.

It was a rather typical Tuesday morning. Steve had gone for a run, hit the gym for a bit, and was currently waiting for the elevator to arrive to take him back up to the common floor for breakfast. Jarvis was usually on top of the elevator timing, it would chime open just as Steve reached it. But this morning, he was just considering taking the stairs when a muffled explosion came from overhead and Jarvis' calm voice sounded out. "Captain, I believe your presence would be appreciated on the laboratory level. There are intruders."

Steve was halfway up the first set of stairs before Jarvis had finished speaking. The labs were full of SI employees, non-combatants who kept Tony's inventions in line and the rest of the Avengers decked out in cutting-edge body armor and weaponry. He paused outside the door to the laboratory floor, the gunshots ringing out from behind it. He had neither shield nor body armor on, but at least he could withstand a bullet better than a scientist.

He cautiously pushed the door open, finding the hallway beyond empty. Steve crept down the hallway, looking into each lab as he passed. They were all dark and empty, without anyone in sight. The gunshots had stopped. As he was passing between the third and fourth lab, a door opened and a dark haired young woman peered out. Seeing him in the hallway, she motioned behind her and a group of white-coated scientists emerged from the lab to her whispered urges, all of them heading towards him and the safety of the stairwell behind.

The young woman was at the back of the group, herding the scientists along like a sheep dog. Her brown hair tumbled down her back, a dark blue sweater, soft jeans and red converse with no socks completing her casual 'I'm not a scientist' outfit. She had just come level with Steve, who opened his mouth to thank her for scientist corralling, when three gunmen came around the corner.

They opened fire without warning, and Steve jumped in front of the young woman, feeling the impact of the bullets along his side as he pushed her down. Grabbing at a fire extinguisher mounted along the wall he threw it side-armed at the attackers, watching as it ricocheted off the first one and into the second. The third seemed to find something better to do and ran down the hallway they had come from, leaving his partners unconscious on the ground.

Steve turned back to the young woman, who smiled in a dazed sort of way. "Did you just jump in front of a bullet for me? Wow, that's... Oh- Oh shit. I think you missed one. Oh god, that hurts!"

Even though he had known she was going to say those words before she opened her mouth, hearing them aloud made his stomach clench in fear. Pulling the little emergency tin from the pocket of his workout pants he knelt down next to her as she pressed a small hand to the spreading blood on her abdomen.

"Don't worry, doll. I've been preparing for this moment for a long time."

Her mouth fell open for a moment, before she started to laugh and cry at the same time. "Of course, that's what it would mean." He pulled up her sweater to find the bullet wound, and found the small, bleeding hole in her side, neatly surrounded by two concentric arcs with his words to her in his own untidy handwriting.

 _Don't worry, doll. I've been preparing_

 _for this moment for a long time._

"I'm Steve," he said, starting to close the wound.

"Darcy," she replied. "Nice to finally meet you."

"You too, soulmate. It's been a long time coming." Her answering smile was like a thousand sunrises and he knew that waiting ninety-something years for her had all been worth it.


	2. Chapter 2

Soul marks could be a tricky thing. Western society had usually treated them with romance and wonder. What would Shakespeare or Jane Austen be without soul-mark fueled love stories? Hollywood seemed to be able to crank out a new mark driven rom-com every six months. Some Eastern religions used soul-marks to show the divide of the self, the unity that could be found in your soul-mate and therefore in nature and all things. Some ascetics refused to acknowledge their marks, denying themselves of even that pleasure in their pursuit of something grander. And in the worst moments of human history, they had been used as means of control or coercion. Not that a soul mark could be removed. Burn it off, remove a limb, tattoo over it - the soul mark would simply reappear on the body elsewhere. Fate would not be denied this mark of eternal bonding.

Bucky would know. He had vague memories of words showing up in the middle of a mission in 1984 just under his collar bone. His handler had burned it off with a hot knife blade. The words must have shown up again, probably along his hip where a wide, shiny scar now sat and down his calf where another large section of skin had been burned clean. Assets don't have marks, so it was removed each time. He didn't even know (remember?) that he had one until he had been free for three weeks. On day nineteen of being Bucky, not the Asset, he had been at a men's shelter that actually had full length mirrors. He'd caught the flash of something dark running down his spine and twisted around to catch the tiny printing of words.

 _No, I'm here to love you._

Bucky stared at the words, somehow foreign and yet oddly comforting. They would keep him going in the dark of the nights, when the memories of long dead missions came back to haunt him with their ghostly accusations. The words grounded him when the memories of Steve Rogers made him question if he would ever be good enough to deserve someone's forgiveness. In the end, it was the confidence he felt in those words that kept him going when he would have just eaten his gun instead. Somewhere, somehow, someone would love him.

* * *

Natasha was born with her mark low on her abdomen. When she was handed over to the Red Room, they decided it was unobtrusive enough to leave alone. Some girls had their's burned away, in hopes that it would reappear in a more advantageous place on their bodies. They were all taught that their marks were meaningless, a throwback to an old way of thinking, a weakness to be overcome and suppressed. In this, Natasha excelled. After all, her mark was a question with a clear answer... Yes.

When she joined up with Shield, she was exposed to a whole new way of thinking about marks. Most people had them, and they were a cherished part of their bodies - something to be celebrated and enjoyed. Natasha landed somewhere in the middle, not suppressing it as she had been taught, but not quite ready to bare it all for the world to see. When the Winter Soldier shot his target through her, she actually ended up laughing as the medics patched her up. The bullet hole ended up right between the unnaturally large space between the ' _here_ ' and the ' _to_ ' on her mark. Fate had been planning for that bullet it seemed.

* * *

Bucky... James... The Asset. Whoever he really was now, he had one last thing to do before he could even think about Steve and the safety he represented. He couldn't bring this fight to Steve's doorstep. He wouldn't come in from the cold until the ice in his veins was thawed a bit more, and that meant taking down Hydra cell after Hydra cell. He would burn them all to the ground and warm his frosty heart over their crackling fires.

It was one such slash-and-burn mission that was almost his undoing. His intel was good, his entry unnoticed, his plan without flaw. Something went wrong though, and he found himself facing not the twenty men he had prepped for, but a full scale army of Hydra agents, waiting for an enemy much larger than he. Bucky did his best, fighting against a superior force in close quarters until he was eventually pushed back into a dimly lit hallway with no exits. He could hear the sounds of battle from above him, and realized the enemy Hydra was expecting had finally arrived. Usually the whole 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' thing would work, except that The Asset was an enemy of just about every nation-state on the planet.

There was no way out of this one. He was strong, had super healing, was trained to be the best, but there were too many Hydra agents and not enough exits. He felt the tear of bullets as they shredded his leg and shoulder, the punch of force as more impacted his armored vest. They ricocheted off his metal arm, slicing his exposed skin with bullet fragments. He counted eleven Hydra agents, and the weight of the gun in his hand said he had four bullets left. Three bullets, ten agents. Two bullets, eight agents. One bullet, seven agents. No bullets, six agents. No gun, five agents and a new hole in his other leg, causing him to crash to his knees. His eyesight was growing a bit dim but he thought he could take five agents if they quit shooting at him. And came at him one at a time.

Now he could only see four agents. No, three agents. There was a black blur and there were no more agents crowding the hallway in front of him. There was a slender young woman in a black suit and flaming red hair. She looked vaguely familiar to Bucky, but he couldn't quite place her. Her posture though, it told him everything. She assessed the hallway, him, the dead agents, the weapons strewn around the ground. She was an assassin and Bucky knew this was it for him. Hydra, the US, any other nation on the planet, someone had found him and sent her and this was how it ended for Bucky Barnes.

"Are you here to kill me?" he croaked out. Probably not the greatest last words, but he doubted that she would care much.

She looked at him with unreadable eyes and passed a hand across her left hip before coming closer to him and crouching down.

"No, I'm here to love you." She smiled then and it transformed her face. She was radiant, soft, beautiful. She spoke into a comm unit then, "Steve, get down here. I found him. And we have some news for you!"

Bucky raised a blood smeared hand to her face, brushing aside a tendril of hair. "I know you..."

"You shot me once," she replied with a raised eyebrow. "I won't hold it against you though."

They both looked up as Steve came barreling around the corner and skid to a halt in front of them. "Is he okay? Crap, that's a lot of blood, Buck! Damn it, Nat, why didn't you call for a medic!"

"Watch your mouth, punk, that's my soul mate you're talking to."

Watching Steve's mouth open and close like a fish's was probably one of the funniest things Bucky had seen in decades. He felt a laugh rumble out of his chest for the first time in seventy years. He reached out a hand to the red-head who had saved him before he had ever met her. He was coming home and it was all because of her.


End file.
